This cool guy makes me smile 500 times a day and I am privileged to be his Mom. So happy Mother’s Day to *you*, my sweet little one!
Love, Mommy
This cool guy makes me smile 500 times a day and I am privileged to be his Mom. So happy Mother’s Day to *you*, my sweet little one!
Love, Mommy
p.s. This hairstyle was done at daycare. One of the teachers likes to do pigtails on the girls, and on this particular day, Emmett got to join in the fun with a sort of pigtail fauxhawk. I love it!
My little boy is getting so big! He can’t walk yet, but his balance is improving. He crawls very fast and keeps us chasing him all over the house. Emmett’s first birthday is just a few weeks away!
Kelly
Baby is entertained by dogs. He giggles as they run and play. He gets to pet them and ride them (sort of).
Dog scavenges around baby’s high chair. At Max’s recent vet checkup, I found out he had gained a few pounds, so we may need to limit the scavenging.
Yes, life is exciting and wonderful with this 10 month old boy. He is having so much exploring his world.
Here are his 9 and 10 month photos:
And here are some other recent activities. This kid loves to crawl into dog crates. Is this normal?
Trying on Auntie Coco’s hat:
Sumo baby! I use a Snappi (meant to hold traditional cloth diapers in place without safety pins) to keep a towel on Emmett for “naked time” while containing any potential mess. He looks like a sumo wrestler.
An orange makes a pretty good toy.
I have zillions of pictures, and I will post more later. Have a great week!
-Kelly
I’ve seen you laugh at nothing at all
I’ve seen you sadly weeping
The sweetest thing I ever saw
Was you asleep and dreaming
Well you may not be beautiful
But it’s not for me to judge
I don’t know if you’re beautiful
Because I love you too much
-Magnetic Fields, “Asleep and Dreaming,” 69 Love Songs
…except I’m pretty sure Emmett is beautiful.
-Kelly
I hope raising a baby counts as a DIY project, because otherwise we’re way off course with this blog. But can you blame me? Look at that face and tell me you’d rather see a picture of the rustic shelves Matt built to hold all our stuff in the garage. OK, I will tell Matt to post a picture of the shelves too.
Emmett was 8 months old last week. Without further ado, please enjoy his 7 month and 8 month photos:
As you can see, his two bottom teeth are in full effect (and have been for a few months) and he is now proficient at sitting. Emmett can do some other cool things lately:
Eating (from a mesh feeder):
Being a burrito:
Lying on a dog:
Riding a dog:
Riding a llama:
Listening to music:
Loving bath time as much as ever:
He is really into using his index fingers. He wants to touch every little thing. If there is a piece of lint on the floor, he touches it. If there is a screw on a piece of furniture, or a hole in a wheel, or anything small like that, he really focuses his attention there and touches it deliberately with his little pointer finger. We fed him some puffs the other day, and while he can and usually does grasp them between thumb and finger, there was one that he touched with the index finger of each hand and then picked it up off the tray that way! Babies are so entertaining.
-Kelly
My attempt at a Christmas-themed photo shoot with Emmett, Sonny and Max. Ultimately we decided none of the shots were worthy of printing (not the best lighting), but I they still make me smile. My three sweeties. Posting very late, but come on, how cute are my baby and pups?
I love how Emmett was moving all around and the dogs stayed in exactly the same positions the whole time like statues.
-Kelly
When Emmett started daycare, I knew I needed to label a lot of things. Everything he takes to daycare - clothes, blankets, pacifiers, bottles, food - is supposed to be labeled with his first and last name, plus the date in the case of bottles and refrigerated food. They’re not strict about clothing, though you run the risk of losing items if they lack labels, but they are pretty serious about the bottles and food. Of course my first inclination was low tech DIY: just write his name on everything with a Sharpie. Unfortunately, my friends with older kids in daycare told me the Sharpie wears off the bottles and you have to keep writing it over and over. One friend gave me a couple sheets of freezer labels that can be printed at home. I printed them up, with varying results. Maybe my printer malfunctioned or was not the right type for these labels, but some were smudgy. They have held up well though, going through the dishwasher and fridge (and occasionally freezer) over the past five months. A few bled even more the first time through the dishwasher, even though I waited at least a day after putting the labels on. Some are like the one on the left, some are like the one in the center. Even the bad ones are readable, so I’m leaving them alone.
I have two labels on each bottle: a permanent one with Emmett’s name, and a LabelOnce erasable label on which I write the date (daycare requires this), the quantity (to facilitate my own OCD record keeping), and the date I pumped it (for my own info so I know how fresh it is). These labels are neat: you write on them with a Sharpie and then you can erase it later. They stay on really well through the dishwasher, fridge and freezer, and the writing stays on about as well as it does on anything else - it gradually wears off after a few times through the dishwasher. Going through the dishwasher doesn’t seem to affect the erasability, which you can do with any soft, white eraser like the Magic Rub. I don’t know if they’re that much easier than using masking tape, which is what other people seem to use for the date, but it works well for me. One note: it’s very difficult to write on the LabelOnce labels when they are cold and/or wet with condensation, so it’s best to write before they go into the fridge or freezer.
The bottle lids and rings are too small for the printed freezer labels, so at first I wrote on them with Sharpie. Sure enough, it was barely legible after a few passes through the dishwasher. Meanwhile, my special fabric Sharpie worked well on the paper-like tags of clothing, but on some fabric tags it bled so much it just turned into a black blob, and I hated writing on tagless items.
Another friend had told me about Name Bubbles, and I decided I’d spent as much time going the DIY route as I was willing to, so it was time to give in and buy some. I chose the smallest possible labels: Bitty Clothing Labels for clothes and Mini Labels for bottles. They’ve worked really well. For the bottle lids and rings, I cut them down to size so they’d fit on the side. They definitely look nicer than the freezer labels. If I ever need to put fresh labels on the bottle parts, I will use the Name Bubbles. I’m also applying them to the reusable baby food containers we use when we make our own purees.
Name Bubbles is having a 20% off sale that ends today, so I thought I’d share my experience with them. If you miss today (1/22/13), they have periodic sales and will tell you about them if you sign up for their email list. I just ordered some more of the Bitty Clothing Labels. They stay on well through laundering and peel off nicely if/when you want to pass along the item to someone else.
Note: I’m not being compensated in any way for this post. I like the LabelOnce and Name Bubbles labels, so I wanted to share the info with other parents who may also be wondering if there’s an easier way to label everything.
-Kelly
p.s. Do you know what the title of this post references? I’ll give you a hint: Tim Whatley regifted it.
While Matt has a long list of new year resolutions, I have but one. OK, maybe I have a few other things I’m planning to try to do better this year, but I’m focusing on one very important resolution. If/when I am successful with this one, it should make it possible for me to tackle other things. Sleep. Specifically, Emmett’s sleep. More specifically, my goal is to be able to put Emmett in his crib and have him go to sleep and stay asleep or go back to sleep on his own without needing to nurse so frequently.
Our current routine involves me nursing Emmett to sleep in my bed and then either staying in bed with him (I read books, catch up on email or internet on my phone, listen to podcasts, or catch some ZZZs myself) or sneaking out of bed and folding some laundry in the bedroom. I used to be able to sneak out of the room and go do other things for a couple hours while listening to the baby monitor, but ever since Emmett learned to roll over, I haven’t been able to leave the room for more than a moment. Now that he can crawl, I can’t even leave for a few seconds because he can wake up and as quickly and silently as a ninja, he can be at the edge of the bed. A barrier of pillows is no obstacle for him. So as much as I’ve enjoyed snuggling my sleeping baby and the forced relaxation time for myself, I’ve decided it’s time for Emmett to learn to sleep in his crib. Since I can’t really get into the crib to nurse him and then sneak away, I need to be able to place him there, either already asleep without waking, or awake with the ability to go to sleep on his own. My past attempts to nurse him down and then move him have failed; he always wakes up.
The crib is set up in our room. I’ve read several books and I have a plan in mind, subject to trial and error. My hope is that in a few weeks (?), Emmett will have a new life skill and I’ll have reclaimed some autonomy. Wish us luck!
-Kelly
-Matt